


better left unsaid (for now)

by everytuesday



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Attempted Love Confession, Friendship, Hangover, M/M, Post-Episode AU: S02E06 Sex and Candy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23816884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everytuesday/pseuds/everytuesday
Summary: kyle has something important to tell alex. alex has had a rough night.(au where alex is kyle's "someone else")
Relationships: Alex Manes/Kyle Valenti, Past Michael Guerin/Alex Manes - Relationship
Comments: 24
Kudos: 111





	better left unsaid (for now)

**Author's Note:**

> this is very anti-The Threesome, but there's no maria or michael bashing.
> 
> thanks to [ patrokla ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla) for beta-ing.

He falls asleep on Alex’s porch because the lethal combination of it being 2am and having had seven drinks (he’d thrown back one last shot before leaving, for some extra-but-probably-unneeded liquid courage) is too much for him to overcome in the end.

(Rosa drove him to Alex’s because it turns out drunk-Kyle is very bad at reading and sent his questionably-worded text to the wrong Ortecho. Or maybe it’s the right Ortecho, because Rosa asks no questions about why he’s sitting on the curb outside of a gay bar or why he wants to go Alex Manes’ house. She does, however, have some stipulations.

“When you sober up after this, you owe me a story. And I’m gonna pretend to be disgusted, but I actually do care because I literally can’t have any relationship drama of my own with the whole ‘I’m 31 but also 19 and no one on the planet can relate to my life experiences’ thing.”

“Hey, you’ll find someone someday, if that’s what you want. But this right now? It’s the time to focus on you.”

“Do you always sound like a yoga instructor when you’re drunk?”

“You’ve really got the sisterly mocking thing down, you know? Go home, be safe, I love you. Don’t blow out any light fixtures on the way back.”)

“Valenti, wake up.”

“Kyle!”

_ Alex _ . He has to tell Alex-- The moment he cracks his eyes open, they’re greeted by blinding light and an unbearable pounding in his skull. “Oh god, I wanna die.”

“Do I want to know why you passed out on my front porch?”

“No,” Kyle says thickly. It’s hard to keep track of the reason now, though it floats somewhere in the recesses of his brain. It was definitely important.

“Okay, well…” Alex offers him a hand up and Kyle staggers to his feet, his head throbbing more than ever. “You might as well come inside.”

Kyle nods, but he can hear something in Alex’s voice that’s not right. He squints at Alex and through the too-bright haze he sees that he looks… not-happy. Not that he ever gives a great impression of a person who is genuinely happy, but this is a significantly more not-happy look than usual.

“You look more hungover than I do,” Kyle mutters as he follows Alex inside. His stomach lurches and he clasps a hand over his mouth, giving Alex a frantic look.

“That is  _ definitely  _ not true,” Alex says, pointing the way down the hall to the bathroom.

Kyle makes it in time, barely. Now that he’s inside and it’s dark and cooler, he can remember enough of his plan to know that this is absolutely not how he had envisioned things going in his the midst of his drunken bisexual bonding with Isobel. Sitting on Alex’s front porch waiting for him to come like a lost puppy and then immediately running to puke is so, so far away from the romantic declaration he’d been hoping for.

When he finally psyches himself up enough to go back out, Alex has a glass of water and an already-opened can of ginger ale sitting on the kitchen table for him and if Kyle wasn’t in love with Alex Manes before, well.

“You look like shit,” Alex says.

Kyle sinks into a chair, groaning, and presses the palms of his hands into his eyes, more to not have to make eye contact with Alex than to actually try to help with the light sensitivity or the way his skull feels like it’s going to cave in on itself.

He can sense Alex still just standing there, watching him. His breathing is  _ loud _ , and not just because every sound is unbearably loud. He’s taking steady, deep breaths like-- 

Like he’s trying to calm himself down.

Kyle lowers his hands and peers up at Alex and he really does look absolutely miserable.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come over like this, I was smashed.”

“It’s okay,” Alex says distantly.

“Are  _ you  _ okay?”

Alex laughs.

“What happened?”

“I had a shit night, that’s all. Or maybe it was a good night. I’m not really sure yet, but I feel more like shit right now so I’m going with the first one.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Kyle raises his can of ginger ale in Alex’s direction, earning him a slight twitch at the corner of Alex’s lips, which makes Kyle feel like there’s fireworks shooting off somewhere in his chest. “I think talking’s better than not talking, most of the time. And I’m a captive audience until I can convince Liz to pick me up.”

“It really doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” Kyle is wondering if this is getting too close to just saying what he wanted to say in the first place, “I know we’re mostly all business but you’re-- If something bad happened to you, I’d want to know.”

Alex gives him an appraising look and then sighs, “I got stabbed and then I had a threesome with Michael and Maria.”

The first one sounds reasonably in character and is alarming enough for Kyle’s brain to start unfogging. The  _ sleeping with Michael _ also sounds within the realms of things he knows about Alex Manes. But a threesome involving  _ Maria _ ?

“Sorry,” Alex says. “ _ Jesus _ , I can’t believe I actually told you that.”

“No, you’re fine, I’m just surprised. Do you need me to check you out?” Kyle asks, then feels the urgent need to clarify, “Medically?”

“It’s small and they cleaned it for me. I know my way around combat first aid, it should be fine.”

“Okay, then as a medical professional, I need to know that you know that having sex after being stabbed was a terrible idea.”

Alex laughs again, with even less humor than before, and settles himself into the chair across from Kyle. “I’ll add that to my list of reasons to never repeat last night again.”

“Besides the being-stabbed part, are you okay?” Kyle asks. Alex slumps down and rests his arms against the table, hands palms down and Kyle wants more than anything to put his hands over the top of them. He clasps them in his lap instead and leans forward. “Listen, I’ve sworn off putting people in medically induced comas for at least another decade, but I will kick Guerin’s ass for you. Or attempt to kick Guerin’s ass; the Jedi thing is a dirty cheater move.”

“It’s not his fault. Or Maria’s. Emotions were super high and who hasn’t had some questionable ‘glad we’re not dead’ sex?”

“Sounds like the universal human experience.”

Alex sits up straighter, folding his arms and eyeing Kyle, “Okay, I’ve spilled my guts to you. The least I’m owed is knowing why you were on my porch. How long were you there?”

_ Since I realized I was in love with you at midnight at a gay bar with Isobel-fucking-Evans _ . “Rosa thought it would be funny to drive me home from the bar and dump me at your place instead of mine. I do not remember how nineteen year old brains work, but apparently it’s the height of comedy.”

“Sibling bonding sounds like it’s going well then. But what’s up with the--?” Alex gestures to the side of his own face and nods toward Kyle. The rhinestones. Right. Kyle reaches up to pull them off and Alex quickly adds, with an _actual smile_ that turns the firework display in Kyle’s chest up from sparklers to the real expensive shit, “Not a criticism.”

“They were giving them out at the bar.”

Alex narrows his eyes, probably doing the math that the Pony would never offer sparkly pink rhinestones to its patrons and that Kyle wouldn’t be caught dead in the tourist bar. Which leaves...

“The gay bar,” Kyle clarifies to save Alex the trouble and waits for a further reaction, but Alex doesn’t respond. Maybe he’s too exhausted from his own shit or he already guessed Kyle’s sexuality or he just genuinely doesn’t care. Kyle doesn’t know whether to be disappointed or thrilled.

“Listen, I can beg a ride off someone back into town if you need me to go but...” Kyle shrugs. “I can stay too.”

Alex gives him a funny look he can’t place, “You don’t have to do that.”

“I’d be an ass of a friend if I didn’t offer,” Kyle says, but he senses Alex won’t take him up on it, even if he did want it. “And I’m looking at avoiding telling Liz I was drunk enough to let Rosa drive, so really, you’d be doing me a favor by letting me put that off.”

“I’ll give you a ride home and you can stay as long as you want.”

“Aren’t you the bastion of chivalry?” Kyle says, then realizes he’s going to throw up again and gets up like a shot to sprint back down the hall.

He sits on the floor of Alex’s bathroom for a while to avoid the humiliation of facing Alex and also because the floor is cool and it feels good in a weird, gross way. 

There’s a soft knock on the door and Alex calls through, “There’s an extra toothbrush in the cabinet. If you want it. And some aspirin.”

_ Already keeping a toothbrush at his place. Nice. _ says a voice in his head that sounds a little like Rosa.

Kyle emerges from the bathroom and Alex is waiting a few feet away this time, with another ginger ale and a box of saltines.

Kyle accepts them, “Feel free to puke in my bathroom at some point in the future to keep us even.”

“I’ll be sure to do that.”

Alex gets him to sprawl out on the couch and while he takes the floor. Kyle mumbles an apology about being a terrible guest and Alex mumbles something back.

“Hey,” Kyle says, because while this is the absolute wrong time for a love confession, he can get this much out, “You know I care about you, right? You’re-- I think of you as one of my best friends now, which is probably pretty weird from someone who was so horrible to you for so long, but I do.”

Alex smiles wistfully and gives a long pause before he asks, “Do you need anything else?

“Not right now,” Kyle says. He thinks Alex deserves better friends than an asshole jock who used to bully him and now comes over to his house to vomit and drink all his ginger ale. “Do you?”

Alex shakes his head, “Just time, I think.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this to deal with 2.06 in a manner that didn't involve yelling at writers on twitter.
> 
> find me on tumblr at [ archiesweirdfantasy ](archiesweirdfantasy.tumblr.com)


End file.
